Highest Reward Ever Offered for Alleged Cyber Criminal

Highest Reward Ever Offered for Alleged Cyber Criminal

February 27, 2015

A reward of up to $3 million is available for a Russian national the FBI calls “one of the world’s worst” cyber criminals—Evgeniy Bogachev.

Audio Transcript

Mollie Halpern: A reward of up to $3 million is available for a Russian national the FBI calls “one of the world’s worst” cyber criminals—Evgeniy Bogachev. The reward is the highest ever for an alleged cyber criminal.

Robert Anderson: “The blogs of hacktivists around the world will light up because all of a sudden, somebody is putting an X on somebody, saying, “Bring them to justice. You’ve got $3 million.” That’s a big deal.

Halpern: That was FBI Executive Assistant Director Robert Anderson. Bogachev created and operated a botnet called GameOver Zeus which infected about one million computers worldwide, resulting in a $100 million financial loss in the U.S. alone. Bogachev was indicted in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but it took the FBI, its private sector partners, and law enforcement from more than 10 countries to identify him and take down his botnet. Joseph Demarest, the assistant director of the FBI’s Cyber Division, says GameOver Zeus was sophisticated.

Joseph Demarest: We have seen a marked decrease in the botnet itself, its effectiveness or use, down some 80 percent.